Valium she’s out of it for the night. The problem was Kane. If we were gonna do it that way, it would have to be on a night Kane was sleeping over at a friend’s or something. But then Martin, the crazy fucker, just went ahead and did it. First I heard about it was when the coppers came to see me. I swear, I nearly had a heart-attack.” Neil heaved a breath, shaking his head. “I thought Martin was alright, but he’s got serious problems up here.” He tapped his temple. “If it hadn’t been for him, I don’t think I’d ever have gone through with this.”
“Bollocks,” retorted Harlan, sickened to his core by the nauseatingly familiar sound of someone trying to talk their way out of their guilt.
“It’s true. Martin wasn’t even going to give me my full share of the reward, ’cos he reckons I haven’t done enough to earn it.”
“Whose idea was it to take Ethan?”
Neil was silent a moment, then he admitted, “Mine.”
“Then you’ve done plenty to deserve everything you’ve got coming to you.”
“But all I did was come up with the idea, Martin and Paula did-” Neil broke off at a glance from Harlan that warned him there would be dire consequences if he continued to insist on his relative innocence.
They were nearing Spital Street. Three and four-storey blocks of flats loomed over them, rising up one behind another like piles of boxes. Another wave of wooziness washed over Harlan, prompting him to ask, “That’s the other thing I don’t get, why Ethan? Why not abduct some random kid?”
“Martin wanted to, but I told him it had to be Ethan or I wouldn’t go through with it.”
“Why?”
“I know Ethan. I knew he wouldn’t try to fight or escape. Plus, that way I could, y’know, stay close to the investigation and give Martin the heads up if the coppers began sniffing in his direction.”
Harlan narrowed his eyes in scrutiny, wondering whether Neil was really as stupid as his words suggested. If they’d done as Martin wanted, maybe, just maybe, their plan would’ve worked. But this way they had little or no chance of getting away with it. After Paula had contacted the police, it wouldn’t have taken them long to connect her to Martin, and from Martin it was only three or four short steps to Neil. “So you did all this for seventy-odd thousand quid.”
“We expected it would be a lot more. Jamie Sutton’s reward was two hundred thousand.” Neil’s voice took on a sneering tone. “But it turns out most people in this piss-hole of a city won’t put their hands in their pockets to save anyone except themselves. If they had done, this thing would’ve been over weeks ago.”
“Seventy thousand, two hundred thousand, a million. What’s the difference? No amount of money’s worth this.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You haven’t been fucked over by people your whole life.” Neil flashed Harlan a look sodden with resentment. “Susan told me about you. You had it all, and you threw it away.”
Neil’s words pierced Harlan deeper than Nash’s knife had done. Talking about himself was the last thing he wanted to do. And Neil was the last person he owed an explanation of his past to. But still, he felt compelled to respond. “I didn’t throw it away, it was taken from me.”
“Bullshit. Your son died, but you still had a career, a house, a wife who loved you. You still had a million times more than me.”
I had nothing after Tom died! Nothing! Harlan wanted to yell, but he knew that wasn’t true. The truth was he’d been so torn apart by pain, fear and rage that he’d wanted to nullify his identify, make his life nothing. And he’d almost managed it. Almost.
A bitter smile spread across Neil’s face. “I know your type. I’ve known you all my shitty life. You were one of the popular kids, I can tell. Things have always come easy to you. Easy come easy go. But I’ve had to fight for everything I’ve got. I found happiness for the first time when I met Susan, and I wasn’t about to let it go. No fucking way! When she told me she thought maybe we should stop-” He broke off suddenly, as if he’d said more than he intended to.
Looking at Neil’s face, its plain, mousey features quivering with emotion, his parting words to Susan came back to Harlan. I did it for us. Because I wanted us to have a life together. And with them came the realisation of exactly what they meant. A strange kind of relief passed over him, as he said, “This was never about money. Susan was going to leave you. You took Ethan to stop her, to make her need you as much as you need her. Didn’t you?” Silence was all the answer Harlan received, and all the answer he needed. “You never intended to follow your plan through — at least, not the plan you and Yates cooked up. That’s why this thing has dragged on so long. Because you knew that if Susan ever got Ethan back, you and her would be finished. But why involve Yates and his girlfriend? It would’ve been a lot simpler to abduct Ethan yourself, do him in and get rid of the body?”
“I could never hurt Ethan,” Neil retorted fervently.
“No, what I think you mean is, you haven’t got the balls to hurt Ethan yourself. That’s why you needed Yates. You needed him to kill Ethan.” Violent twitches pulled at Neil’s face, twisting one side of it like a stroke victim, as Harlan continued, “What were you planning to do? Feed Yates some bullshit about the police being onto him and panic him into killing the boy? But you didn’t even have the nerve to make that call, did you? At least, not until I backed you into a corner.”
Neil slammed his foot on the break, throwing Harlan against the dashboard. Both him and the tyres screamed in protest. Gasping in the stink of burning rubber, he clutched his wound. Something was bulging out of it, hard and bulbous. Too winded to speak, he twisted towards Neil, expecting him to make a run for it. But Neil was crumpled against the steering-wheel, tears coursing down his cheeks. “I love her,” he sobbed through clenched teeth. “I love her more than my own life. I told her that, and she chucked it back in my face, said she didn’t feel the same way. Said she was sorry. Sorry!” He spat the word out like vomit. “She didn’t love me. She pitied me. Do you know how that feels? To be pitied by someone you’ve offered everything you have? Of course you fucking don’t.” He ground his head against the wheel, groaning, “What was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to do?”
You were supposed to try and convince her she was making a mistake. And if that didn’t work, you were supposed to cry, shout and beg, maybe even threaten to kill yourself. But you weren’t supposed to do this, you pathetic little fuck. That was what Harlan wanted to say, but there was no time, and besides he didn’t have enough breath in his lungs for it. “Take me to Ethan.” Neil was too deep in self-pity to hear Harlan’s hoarse voice. Trembling with the effort, he grabbed Neil’s ear and yanked him upright. “I said take me to Ethan.”
Neil winced, but made no attempt to remove Harlan’s hand. “He’s in there.” He pointed at a boarded up window on the second floor of a scaffolding-encased block of flats that appeared to be largely uninhabited. All the neighbouring windows were also as dark as the night sky, except for the flickering bluish glow of a TV coming from the flat below. “Looks like Paula’s in.”
“What about Yates?”
“I can’t see his car. It could be parked around back.”
“Get out.”
“Aren’t you going to wait for the police? Martin used to box. He’s a bit slow on the uptake, but he’s fast with his fists. You’re in no fit state to-”
“Shut up and do as I say.”
Neil got out of the car. Grimacing, Harlan did likewise. His body felt heavy as a sack of coal. Neil was right, he was in no fit state, but he couldn’t take the risk that harm might come to Ethan while he waited out here. Leaning on the car, he limped around to the boot and opened it. “Now get in there.”
Neil shook his head.
Harlan put the knife to Neil’s throat. “Fucking do it.”
Neil’s tongue flicked nervously across his lips, but he held his ground. “You need my help to get into the flat. I know where the key’s hidden.”
“Tell me.”
“I’ll show you. Look, we’re wasting time. Martin might be up there right now, wondering what’s going on and what to do with Ethan.”
For a tense moment, the two men looked at each other. Knowing he didn’t have the strength to force Neil to do as he demanded, Harlan gestured at the flats with his knife. “Move.” As they approached them, he held onto Neil’s arm, more for support than to prevent Neil from making a break for it. He caught a glimpse through a crack in some curtains of a woman he assumed to be Paula. She was slumped low in an armchair, sipping from a can of lager, eyes vacantly staring from under a fringe of peroxide blond hair, black at the roots. She looked thirtyish, but it was difficult to tell with all the makeup pasted on her face. Her heavy-set body was squeezed into pink leggings and
